Verizon Called in to Bail Out HealthCare.gov Disaster

No matter where you stand on President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act (ACA), otherwise known as Obamacare, one thing most people can agree on is that the rollout of the government sponsored website, HealthCare.gov, has been absolutely horrific. Weeks after launching, the website is still spitting out a range of errors when people try to create an account and browse plans.

Part of the problem seems to be that the website opened its virtual doors to everyone at the same time, and handling that kind of load is a tall order for any organization. Something clearly needs to be done, and it looks as though Verizon may be the one to swoop in the restore order.

Verizon is well versed in this kind of thing, as it already works for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on other information technology contracts.

"Our team is bringing in some of the best and brightest from both inside and outside government to scrub in with the team and help improve HealthCare.gov," HHS stated in a blog post last weekend.

Verizon's name came about via an anonymous source who spoke to USA Today, which notes that the announcement has not yet been made official. However, it makes sense when you consider the existing relationship. If true, Verizon faces a big mess that won't be easy to clean up.

Getting the website to handle the load is only part of the problem. Digging deeper, there are also problems with bad code from insurers, leading to people receiving inaccurate lists of available doctors in some of the new healthcare plans. Stuff like that will also need to be fixed.